Microsoft’s raw deal for Vista users: IE10 for Windows 7 only

When Internet Explorer 10 ships next year, it will be supported on Windows 7 …

One of the minor "features" Microsoft included in the Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview released earlier this week was reduced operating system support; it will only install on Windows 7, leaving Windows XP and Windows Vista users out in the cold. Microsoft confirmed to Computerworld that this was no accident, with a spokesperson saying "Windows Vista customers have a great browsing experience with IE9, but in building IE10 we are focused on continuing to drive the kind of innovation that only happens when you take advantage of the ongoing improvements in modern operating systems and modern hardware."

That's a claim that's hard to make any sense of.

When the company announced that Internet Explorer 9 wouldn't support Windows XP, the decision made sense. Though it meant cutting off a large number of Windows users, Internet Explorer 9 was written to depend heavily on Direct2D and DirectWrite for all its hardware accelerated high-performance graphics, and on Windows' Mandatory Integrity Control (among other things) for security. Direct2D and DirectWrite were both introduced on Windows 7 and back ported to Windows Vista; MIC was introduced with Windows Vista. In neither case were the features available on Windows XP, nor even readily ported to that operating system.

But no such disparity exists between Windows Vista and Windows 7. Windows 7 is undoubtedly better than Windows Vista. It's three years newer, improvement was inevitable. What it isn't, however, is substantially different. Windows Vista did the hard work—radically new display subsystem, new audio subsystem, new media framework, and so on. Windows 7 just consolidated those changes. As we noted when we reviewed Windows 7, the decision to upgrade from Windows Vista was not entirely clear-cut.

So unless Microsoft is planning to back port some big chunk of Windows 8 functionality to Windows 7—and then make Internet Explorer 10 depend heavily on that functionality, just as Internet Explorer 9 depends on Direct2D and DirectWrite—the talk of "ongoing improvements" is hard to fathom. Windows 7 is an incremental improvement on Windows Vista now, and it will be that same incremental improvement this time next year. To imply that Windows 7 is somehow "modern" in a way that Windows Vista is not is disingenuous in the extreme.

There's also a question of support. Windows Vista is still in mainstream support. This means that it's still, in theory at least, eligible for nonsecurity bug-fixes and improvements. It'll be in mainstream support until April 10th 2012. Assuming Internet Explorer 10 comes about a year from now—just as Internet Explorer 9 took about a year from its first Platform Preview at MIX10 to the final release—then, depending on which day of the week the software ships, Windows Vista will either still be in mainstream support when Internet Explorer 10 ships, or will have dropped out of mainstream support by a matter of days, after having been generally available for just over five years.

In contrast, when Windows XP received Internet Explorer 8 on March 29, 2009, it had been on the market for more than seven years, and it too was just on the cusp of losing mainstream support (Windows XP Service Pack 3's mainstream support ended on April 14, 2009).

Of course, Windows XP had one thing that Windows Vista doesn't: substantial market share. Windows Vista's usage is declining, and by next April it will probably be down to five or six percent of the market. A small share, to be sure, but still many tens of millions of users. Users that will be ceded to the competition. Microsoft may feel that such a small market share isn't worth supporting, but if so, surely the company should say so instead of fobbing people off with comments about "modern operating systems".

Whatever the real reason, this is a pretty raw deal for Windows Vista users. Not as bad as the Ultimate Extras farce, but bad all the same. It also means that when Microsoft released Internet Explorer 10, it is likely that it will support just one operating system, with a second, Windows 8, due later in 2012. The company is already being criticized for supporting a mere two operating systems with Internet Explorer 9. Cutting back to one, leaving Windows Vista users out in the cold, is hard to defend.

The corporate sector never really adopted Vista and is going from XP straight to Windows 7. The casual users still using Vista at home may not be too bothered by the lack of features and are likely to get their Windows 7 goodness when buying a new machine.

We have seen what 'legacy' can do to a platform, and I am glad they are getting rid of that part of their history.

As for Microsoft's reasons; it will presumably enable faster development and testing if they concentrate on Windows 7 and forget entirely about Vista. There is bound to be at least some minor differences between those two.

This is actually pretty clear cut. MS just wants to avoid having to support an old OS like it did with XP. That IE8 was available in XP after its extended support timeframe is not a point for IE10 in Vista, but one against it. There's probably not going to be any huge difference from IE9 to IE10 that would justify spending so much money in making it available in Vista. IE9 will still offer a great experience whereas IE6/7 just HAD to be replaced, particularly so because of the security vulnerabilities and consequent maintenance costs they imposed.

Windows Vista reminds me a lot of Windows ME. Windows 7 is a nice, solid platform and I don't blame Microsoft for wanting to move on from XP (which was nice back in the day) and Vista (which is dog shit.)

Well, I have Vista and I don't want to give them more money just because they screwed up Vista. It runs Steam, Itunes and Chrome. I'd buy upgrades if they were cheaper. Another $100 is probably more than my 3 yr old desktop is worth.

This has nothing to do with slowing down innovation to support legacy software. The competitive browsers work nicely on all the Windows OSs and are very innovative. It's not a terrible decision for the reasons above, but it's a troubling change of direction. MS' value to the enterprise is supporting old stuff. If they abandon that, why not try Mac, Chrome or Linux?

Vista's market share is 10% and dropping. It's deader than XP by a factor of 5. It's also 6 years old - I don't see Apple supporting OS 10.4, which came out at about the same time. Time to cut it loose.

Well comparing Vista support to Linux/Mac OS still makes an interesting comparision: Or is FF4 officially supported by Ubuntu 6.10? I doubt that and we better don't get started about Apple, there.

So why is it such a big deal to not support a new browser on a then six year old OS? They probably want to avoid getting the same problems they got with XP - supporting a ten year old OS is probably not a lot of fun..

I guess all the moronic comments above don't see that Microsoft's strategy is to try to push users to BUY windows 7 - whether organizations want it or not. Fortunately, there are MUCH better browsers out there and companies who choose to use a platform that continues to be cost-effective to them can continue to do so. To me it seems like they are trying to emulate to do what apple does with the toys they produce - lets let them use them for a year or two, come up with a new one that is incompatible with the older one with one new "feature" or minimal improvement, and have the sheep give us their money once again. To the lame users who have one PC and don't mind throwing away $150 every year or so to get a slightly prettier interface --- to each his own.

If Vista still has a market share in the double-digits when Windows 8/IE10 hits then I would think MS will go back on this, but I still fail to see how this is a "raw deal"?

Vista users will have IE9 which we know is excellent, and the IE9 -> IE10 transition probably won't bring much that's particularly exciting anyway. I would also expect key features to be patched into IE9 over the next couple of years.

Frankly, faster Vista gets taken off the market, the better. It's been bane to my existence for past 6 month when I had to actually develop software for it.

Serious question: Is Windows 7 seriously that much easier to develop for?

Nope.

The only people who have problems developing software on vista are people who ignored MS guidlines for software development for a long long time before vista existed. Apps that didn't work right on vista, most likely never, ever worked right on XP for standard user accounts, which essentialy Vista and Win7 admin accounts run as for the majority of tasks unless elevation to admin rights is needed. MS has been telling people how to write apps properly to run for standard users since Win2000, just no one listened because they were all developing on XP boxes under admin accounts and ignoring everything else.

Microsoft just seems to be taking a page out of Apple's book here. I personally think it's a good move on the part of Microsoft to drive new users to the better operating system. Windows 7 is a far better experience than Vista.

They should offer a nice discount for Vista to Windows 7 x64 upgrades. That'll be icing on the cake.

I'm a Vista user. Couldn't justify the upgrade cost to Win7. My laptop will probably die of old age (7 years) before IE10 takes hold. Frankly, at this point, I don't see a huge amount of innovation in the browers. Kind of like Word3.0 vs. Word2007 - Modest incremental improvements that take advantage of new trends, but nothing I have to have or can't get elsewhere. Of course, I say this as I write from FF4.

For the record, I'm a casual user. My guess is that the people who care about IE10 have already upgraded their OS & hardware to the latest and greatest.

I find it strange that Ars even bothered to write this story, given the fact that they know full well that the vast majority of computer users passionately hate Windows Vista and aren't sorry in the least to see it go. The comments posted so far are a clear indication that there's no love lost for the product.

If IE10 was not to be supported on Windows 7 and was to be a Windows 8 exclusive product, now that would be a story. Microsoft's "reasons" are pretty lame with respect to IE10 not supporting Vista, but seriously, who cares? This story is a waste of space.

On a related note, Microsoft is doing the right thing by cutting out Windows XP from IE9 and beyond. It's time for Windows XP to die and be put out to pasture. I'm so tired of the tech press (and many enthusiast users) putting it up on a pedestal. It was good, but it wasn't great. The world has been trapped by it for far too long and we all need to just move on. Windows XP was NOT the be all and end all.

Well, I have Vista and I don't want to give them more money just because they screwed up Vista. It runs Steam, Itunes and Chrome. I'd buy upgrades if they were cheaper. Another $100 is probably more than my 3 yr old desktop is worth.

This has nothing to do with slowing down innovation to support legacy software. The competitive browsers work nicely on all the Windows OSs and are very innovative. It's not a terrible decision for the reasons above, but it's a troubling change of direction. MS' value to the enterprise is supporting old stuff. If they abandon that, why not try Mac, Chrome or Linux?

In a year or so you would be much better off sinking 400-500 dollars into a new Dell basic desktop than upgrading from vista to 7

I don't know why you didn't mention the first thing that comes to mind, Peter. There's seems to be a Microsoft interest in removing Windows Vista from the market as quickly as possible and as soon as the maintenance period ends. I don't think Microsoft wants anymore to have to face a fragmented user base across 3 operating systems as is the case now. I for one can understand this decision, even if it is damaging for anyone wanting to -- or being forced to -- be left behind. Even ignoring the problems this fragmentation brings to developers across the world, it makes sense business-wise for a business to push it's userbase into upgrading, when each upgrade comes with money flowing in.

Microsoft experiments in introducing new technologies and refusing to backport them (DX10 comes to mind) even despite these technologies introducing nothing that could stop such backport, produced some fruits at least in the home markets. It seems to work and as such, I'm expecting more of this.

Your attempt at discussing this on the technology level is futile. What you heard/read was the typical corporate announcement. I didn't think anyone actually still took those to the letter.

It makes perfect sense not to support XP, but Vista is a considerably more modern OS. I agree that it was a flop, but I doubt there are many real differences between Vista and 7 "under the hood", especially that would actually matter to a web browser.

I'd also wager that there are orders of magnitude more businesses running XP than Vista.

Well, I have Vista and I don't want to give them more money just because they screwed up Vista. It runs Steam, Itunes and Chrome. I'd buy upgrades if they were cheaper. Another $100 is probably more than my 3 yr old desktop is worth.

This has nothing to do with slowing down innovation to support legacy software. The competitive browsers work nicely on all the Windows OSs and are very innovative. It's not a terrible decision for the reasons above, but it's a troubling change of direction. MS' value to the enterprise is supporting old stuff. If they abandon that, why not try Mac, Chrome or Linux?

Those users that have found themselves running Vista have every right to be skeptical of the current version of Windows. You really can't blame them for being reluctant to upgrade again.

The copies of Vista that are out there already are likely due to less technical users being stuck with Vista because that's what the hardware vendor at the time was shipping. That vendor lock that goes back to MS-DOS.

The whole point of that is to 'leave' XP and Vista behind. Because there are still (according to your numbers) 10's of millions of Vista users, that's potentially 10's of millions of upgrades to Win7. Even adjusting for market share (55% or so) for those who only use IE, and even adjusting for a 20% defection rate as others just migrate to other browsers, you'd still be talking about millions of Win7 upgrades @ $100.00 a crack.

Lets say 30 million Vista users, 55% of that is just about 16 million users. Lop of a quarter of those, and you're at 12 million users. Assume they pay $100 each to upgrade and... 12,000,000 * 100 = 1,200,000,000, or... $1.2 billion.

Any time you can flick a software switch (by restricting installation) and increase W7 market share AND make over a billion in upgrades, Heck, even if half of the users defect to competing browsers you're still talking $800 million. Sounds like a typical case of follow the $$$

The kick in the teeth for Vista users is that they haven't upgraded to Windows 7, yet

The value proposition of Windows 7 for an existing Windows Vista user is pretty slight. 7 is better, but it's probably not $100 better.

Some people might also have more than one computer to upgrade. Family packs make it cheaper per computer, but it's still more money. If you had 4 computers (Yours, wife's laptop, two kid's computers) it would be $250 for a family pack plus a single upgrade.

IE 10 will likely come out when Windows 8 does. Not porting IE 10 to Vista is right in line with MS only supporting the last two major versions, so it's only the same raw deal that MS has had for a long time.

Vista's market share is 10% and dropping. It's deader than XP by a factor of 5. It's also 6 years old - I don't see Apple supporting OS 10.4, which came out at about the same time. Time to cut it loose.

Your "facts" have no basis in reality. Below are current OS percentages. Also Vista was released in November 2006, so try less than 5 1/2 Microsoft has ridiculously long periods they support OSes tho due to business customers. The company I work at is still on XP and plans to move to 7 next year. They finally shifted everyone from IE6 to IE8 late last year

I guess all the moronic comments above don't see that Microsoft's strategy is to try to push users to BUY windows 7

Shock newsflash - Operating System company wants users to BUY its products! Attempts to lure customers by offering free software! Pundits are aghast at Microsoft's underhand ploy in trying to entice people to switch from a five-year old operating system!

Yeah, well, there's certainly one 'moronic' comment in this thread.

Microsoft's five-year maintenance period is already generous enough, I don't see why they should be gratuitously criticised for not extending it.

As a Sys Admin for a company that is 65% XP and 35% Vista (we just ordered our first machine with Win7 yesterday) I think it sucks that IE 10 won't be available for Vista. All of our office computers use Vista and they are the ones on the internet. Since each new version typically has better security, that leaves my entire office more open to exploits.

As a typical user I couldn't care less about Vista. I only used it on my personal machine for a short time and was quick to switch when Win 7 was available to me (via MSDN). Besides, IE isn't the only game in town.